No./15 Inside the VHS megaboom
A new video craze has seen movie fans going to extremes to fulfil their analogue dreams. We find out why
YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for never having heard of Nukie. This 1987 South African spin on Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-terrestrial, complete with a wrinkly, big-headed extra-terrestrial who lands on Earth and befriends curious children, has been widely labelled one of the worst movies of all time, not least due to its creepy animatronics and talking chimpanzee. “If I ever have to torture someone, I’ll use this,” wrote one Letterboxd user.
So why, then, has a copy of the infamously bad film, on VHS no less, just sold on ebay for a whopping $80,000? A recent boom in auctions for old and rare VHS tapes has seen vintage, sealed copies of major blockbusters like
Back To The Future and Star Wars: A New Hope sold for $75,000 and $60,000 respectively. But the disastrous Nukie? That particular sale was part of a charity auction by Youtubers Redlettermedia, but this rising trend in VHS appreciation means all sorts of films are growing in value. It’s even having a glorified movie moment of its own thanks to films like Censor, set in the video-nasty era, or Ghostbusters: Afterlife, in which Paul Rudd’s Gary Grooberson plays his class VHS tapes of Cujo and
Child’s Play. Then, of course, there’s the format’s celebrity endorsers; see: The Video Archives Podcast, hosted by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.
Jay Carlson, Consignment Director of VHS at Heritage Auctions and the man who handled the Back To The Future sale, understands this hype for rare tapes as a VHS collector himself. “I think that people who grew up loving VHS are
now doing well in their careers and have some expendable money. They want to recapture a piece of that history that they remember so well,” he says. Nostalgic memories of video-rental services in the 1980s is a big part of this trend, he believes, but Carlson adds that, for him, they’re also just great to look at. “Some of these VHS cases are just beautiful,” he explains. “They’re like mini movie posters to keep on display.”
Other collectors share Carlson’s nostalgia for VHS but enjoy the challenges of collecting on a much smaller scale. London-based collector and Host screenwriter Jed Shepherd loves finding abandoned tapes in skips and charity shops. He’s got VHS tapes “spread across London in storage containers and sheds,” he says, and regularly shares his collection with viewers at monthly screenings for the London Video Club, revelling in the chance to keep the VHS experience alive.
It’s not an easy task, however, with tapes becoming harder and harder to find. Deptford Market in London is one of Shepherd’s top haunts for Vhs-hunting — “in rain-soaked boxes in-between old toys and hi-fi equipment,” he specifies.
Similarly to Shepherd, Paul Zamarelli, an American archivist and founder of the VHS database website Vhscollector.com, is interested in collecting niche horror movies with what he describes as “lurid box art, provocative titles and sleazy fly-by-night distributors”, like ’90s B-movie Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator. “When I read that movie title in a film book, I thought to myself, ‘What in the world could this be? Could this actually exist?’” Zamarelli explains. “This set me on a mission to track down any oddball, bizarre horror titles that caught my curiosity.”
Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator is one that Shepherd is on the hunt for himself. Even though a Blu-ray release of the film is on the horizon, he wants the original VHS. Not every film will have the luxury of being transferred to another format too, with many “remaining in this limbo and only ever released on VHS,” he says. His interest in saving these tapes from extinction is not just about maintaining a collection, but about giving these films a chance to be seen again and remembered.
So whether you fancy joining the big-money collectors or just want to dabble in some childhood nostalgia, it’s definitely worth checking what’s lying around in the loft. You might just strike gold, and find a battered copy of Nukie.